Power-Popscurites: The Kicker - First Word, Last Place

Mike Koop is a rock star. Your inattentiveness to this fact does not change it. And it isn’t for lack of trying on Koop’s part that this is so. Mike Koop, who has played in more bands than Jim Keltner, has been singing his tales of love and loneliness for almost twenty years and where have you been? Fast asleep on a bag of feed grain in your uncle’s barn that’s where.


Koop's very first band as a guitarist was Wilfred Nailer and his second one was Run Chewbacca Run. Did I mention Mike Koop, rock star, cannot name bands? Next, upon moving to the thriving metropolis of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Koop joined the Dylan-droppin' Buick Six, a small, portable folk festival who recorded an album to which he contributed four very fine songs. To complicate matters, Koop also joined Winnipeg's feral hardcore nightmare, Swallowing Shit as well as forming his first band as lead singer/song-writer; Cheerleader. Cheerleader, who were like some unholy cross between Big Star and AC/DC, debuted in 1995 on a split 7" in with local la-la poppers b’ehl, who, according to legend were thusly named because it sounded "less hippy” than Bell. (Winnipeggers in general - Monuments Galore? Propagandhi? Whole Lotta Milka? - have some issues with band names*).

(Koopie Bonaduce gets some air.)

By the mid-nineties, with his role as guitarist/backing vocalist in pop-punkers The Bonaduces, Koop had four fairly serious bands going simultaneously! So Koop quit Swallowing Shit (“I’m too wussy for this band” were supposedly his parting words) and then Buick Six (“I’m not wussy enough for this band” could have been his parting words). The wildly-improved Bonaduces put out an album on Squirtgun Records and toured Eastern Canada with the ever-strengthening Cheerleader (a tour booked by yours truly, dear reader). They fed undercooked steak to raccoons who paid them back by puking on the wheels of their van. It was that good. Though Cheerleader broke-up after their second 7", The Bonaduces became ever-stronger until the unfortunate start of lengthy hiatus that will be ended when the new album drops in September '10 (!)

In the final days of The Bonaduces, Koop formed a flurry of bands, like Dud (with John K. Sampson, then of Propagandhi, now of the Weakerthans), CCCP and finally The Kicker, whom you will now meet. The Kicker consisted of Jon Plett (The Home Team, The Details) on bass/vocals and Jack Jonasson (The Paperbacks, Novillero, Fiber Tree {Fiber Tree? Maybe Run Chewbacca Run tweren’t such a bad name after all} on drums/vocal. Kicker played Koop's songs faster and harder than ever but kept the layered vocals right out front. 2001's First Word, Last Place, on Salad Dressing Records, now available for MRML readers in glorious 192 kbps mid-fi sound, shows off all their strengths.


The Kicker - The Drummer



First Word, Last Place link is in the comment


Wild hair, badly-named bands, manic stage presence, terrifying interviewee (he even intimidated Nardwaur the Human Serviette with baffle-gab!) these are the traits of rock star awaiting discovery.


The Kicker have a MySpace
Mike Koop has YouTube Channel
The Bonaduces are here at MRML
Mike Koop's Multitude of Sins album is here

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*For the record, this writer was once in a band named Jane Fonda and The Hondas, so everyone named and shamed in this piece can rest easy.